


The Wave

by SenpaiMarshmallow



Category: Assassination Classroom
Genre: (and metaphors), Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Far Too Many Similes, GO TO THERAPY DAMMIT, Heavy Angst, I mean it, I wouldn't do that to you, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Medical Experimentation, Itona's basically a mess, M/M, Not a lot but it's there, Panic Attacks, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Swearing, Talking down, Terasaka is a good boyfriend, You Have Been Warned, he has a van, he needs to go to therapy, it turns out okay, there's only so much Itona can take, this one is pretty heavy not gonna lie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-01-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:49:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22251379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SenpaiMarshmallow/pseuds/SenpaiMarshmallow
Summary: It's a long drop to the water below.
Relationships: Horibe Itona/Terasaka Ryouma
Comments: 10
Kudos: 86





	The Wave

**Author's Note:**

> Again: suicidal thoughts. Suicide attempt (almost). Mind how you go.

Rain lances through the streetlight beams, gold-orange streaks there and gone and there and gone again. The droplets sleet downwards and shatter, a fractured halo around the figure on the railing.  
It's a long drop to the water below, though you can't see that tonight. The little circle of light peters out long before it reaches the waves, but Itona can picture them like they've been printed in his mind: they'll be blacker than the night around them, whipped by wind and rain into twisted peaks. There'll be a branch or two floating there, maybe, torn by the storm from a faraway tree and dragged down, down to the sea. And they'll be cold, numbing, heartstopping cold, seeping through the tangled mess of his body and brain and freezing all the heat and pain for good.  
He knows cold. It's an old friend. WInter nights spent huddled in doorways, wind biting into thin limbs. Laboratories built of tile and steel, long chill fingers in white gloves. He's learned to welcome it.  
He leans out still further, just balanced on the ledge, one hand on the rain-slicked pole of a streetlight. The long, dark drop fascinates him, the way the rain falls and falls and vanishes, cut off cleanly at the edge of the light's circle. It would be so easy, he thinks. Just to step forward, let the cold rise up to meet him. Maybe he could look up as he fell, watch the light fade away. And then the waves would have him, and there would be nothing. No more endless grey hours, dragging himself through when all he wants is to lie down and wither away. No more days when every nerve feels raw, and sounds are too loud and colours are too bright, and Shiro laughs in his head whenever he closes his eyes. No more nights waking up with a throat ragged from screaming, tangled in sheets that feel like the straps that held him down, Terasaka looking at him like -  
He jerks backwards. The night spins around him and then his shoulders hit asphalt, driving the breath from his body. Terasaka. _Terasaka._  
What is he doing? He can't . . . he can't do this to Saka. Not like this.  
But here and now, on a bridge in a storm, he's not sure he can stop himself.  
_He'll manage without me_ , says a voice in his mind, and he knows he shouldn't listen but it sounds so reasonable. _He'll be better off._  
He's standing again, leaning out over the rail. When did that happen?  
One hand goes to his pocket, finds his phone. Trembling fingers unlock the screen, pull up the contacts.  
But his skin is wet and numb, and the phone slips from his rain-slicked hand and tumbles into the dark.  
He almost goes after it, then. It's instinctive, atavistic, and his fingers tighten on the rail, ready to vault over. His whole body aches with the effort of not doing it.  
He feels like there's a tide rushing in his head, roaring through the dark places and cascading away over the edge of the bridge, dragging him with it. And everything he clutches at crumbles away under his touch, and he's not sure that he really wants to be saved at all. It would be easy. So easy.  
He needs help, he knows. But here and now it's so hard to care, and the roaring waterfall is getting closer and closer in his head, and he's climbing onto the railing, ready and willing to take that last step . .  
He wants to fall backwards, he thinks. He wants to go facing the light.  
He turns, and that's when he sees it. A metal box, painted blue, keypad and phone on the front, tucked away behind a glass door. He had it clocked before, of course; some training never fades - steel enclosure, bolted down, electronics might be useful in a pinch, could be used as cover, threat level: low. But now he sees it properly, sees it for what it is: a lifeline.  
If he's strong enough to take it.  
He drops to his knees in front of the box. There's a number stenciled in white on the side, but he ignores it. It takes three tries for his shaking fingers to dial the one he wants.  
Terasaka picks up on the fourth ring. "Yeh?" he says, voice heavy with sleep. "Who's this?"  
"It's me." They're the only words he can manage.  
"Itona? What's wrong?"  
"Saka . . . I . . ." His voice peters out.  
"Itona, you're scaring me. What's going on?"  
He takes a deep breath. "Saka . . . please. I need help."  
Something in Terasaka's voice changes. "I'm coming. Where are you?" There's the sound of hurried footsteps through the phone line.  
"I . . . the bridge. The bridge over the harbour."  
The sound of an engine starting up, almost-not-quite masking Terasaka's muttered curse. "I'm on my way. Stay on the line 'til I get there, okay? I'll be there soon."  
"Okay . . ." He can feel his breath starting to come fast. There are tears on his face, mixing with the rain.  
"Say," Terasaka says, and his voice is light but Itona can hear the underlying currents: tension, terror, desperation. He hates that he's the cause of this. Maybe he should just . . .  
No. He promised. _Stay on the line until I get there._  
Terasaka is still speaking. "D'you remember the time when . . ." Itona lets the voice wash over him, and it's a different kind of wave. Warm.  
He's sitting on the rail, now, legs dangling like a child's, balanced between the light and the waves in a sort of compromise. Seems like everything's a compromise. Be strong . . . and become a lab rat, a gun in someone else's hand, a child soldier. Be a fighter . . . and burn with the pain, lose yourself in the hot red tide. Regain your mind . . . and lose your purpose, your mission, the only strength you've ever known. Fall in love . . . and spend your days wondering how, _how_ he can stand to love you back.  
One side outweighs the other. It's got to. But for the life of him, he can't figure out which it is.  
Terasaka's telling another story now, a secondhand anecdote about a run-in Muramatsu had with a disgruntled customer. He can't bring himself to comment or laugh or do anything more than listen, but the distraction is a welcome one.  
"Still with me?" Terasaka asks occasionally.  
"Still here," he replies, and each time it feels less of a lie.  
Eventually there's the sound of an engine, and the rattling, battered grey van pulls up behind him. The door opens and Terasaka steps out, wary, hands held slightly up and looking at Itona like he's a wounded animal and he doesn't know whether he'll snarl or run.  
He's seen that look before on another dark night, through a fog of pain and shame and hunger and blind, blind terror. He can tell Terasaka is remembering it too: the blur of streetlights and the pale shadows of the other students' faces in the gloom, and the twin crescents, smile and moon, glowing over everything.  
The smile is long gone, and you can't see the moon tonight.  
"Hey," says Terasaka quietly. "You wanna talk?"  
"I need help, Saka," Itona says, because he understands that; he's not an idiot.  
"What can I do?"  
"I don't know."  
Terasaka spreads his arms a bit wider. "Do you wanna . . . come down here?"  
He shakes his head. "I . . . I'm not sure I can."  
"Okay. Okay."  
There's a long silence. There's the shape of a question tucked away in Itona's head, but he can't quite put the words around it to ask. Terasaka's looking at him like he used to look at the last question on a test paper: confused, a little bit frightened, a little bit desperate.  
That's it, isn't it?  
"Why do you still try to solve me?" he asks, and it comes out quiet, so quiet he's not sure Terasaka has heard him.  
He has, though. His forehead crinkles in a frown. "What do you mean?"  
"Like . . . like I'm a broken window and if you look for long enough you'll work out how all the shards fit together."  
The frown clears. "I don't think it's like that. I think . . . you're the smart one, you're the one who's got to put the bits back. I'm just here in case you drop something."  
Itona huffs out a laugh, surprising himself. "Like now?"  
"Like now."  
He shrugs. "Not doing a very good job of it, am I?"  
"Don't say that. You're still here."  
"Just." He shakes his head. "Okay, why do you stick around? I'm not going to be magically fixed, Saka. I've lost half the pieces. All I'm gonna do is cut my fingers on the glass."  
A loose half-smile. "I reckon you're selling yourself short, but . . . if that's as far as you get, well, that's okay. I'll be here with the bandages."  
"But why?" The word is almost a wail, and he sways on the railing.  
"Easy. I love you." Terasaka's eyes widen, open and honest. "Didn't you know?"  
Any other time Itona would smile at that, and blush, and Terasaka would laugh teasingly and ruffle his hair. Any other time he'd say, "I love you, too."  
But not now, not now, though it's as true as it's always been. Now there are other things that need to be said.  
"You can't," he says. Terasaka's brow creases in puzzlement, but he presses on. Why doesn't he see? "You can't love someone who's not even a person."  
"Itona, no . . ."  
"I'm a weapon. Nothing but a weapon." It comes out bitter, disgusted with himself. Because really, he asked for this, he signed up for it. Literally - there's a piece of paper somewhere with his signature on it, _Horibe Itona_ in shaky, childish characters. "I'm a weapon, and I . . . I don't even have a target anymore."  
Terasaka shakes his head, frantic. There's a spark in his eyes, bright with tears - deep, deep distress. "No!" he says, almost shouts, and Itona flinches from the sound in a way he can't stop, a way that's driven deep into his bones. Shouting means punishment, means disappointmentdisgust **anger** , and though part of him knows that Terasaka has never done that, would never do that, a much larger part sees nothing but a white hood and a black visor, and that part is curled up and screaming.  
It's getting hard to breathe. His vision is fading at the edges, turning cracked and grainy like an old movie. Dimly he hears Terasaka saying "Shit, shit, I'm sorry, Itona, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to yell. C'mon, say something, please. Itona?" and he uses that as a lifeline, pulling himself back from the edge. The rain hits his face and he tips his head back, lets the sensation ground him. At least no-one can see the tears in his eyes.  
Terasaka is leaning against the rail beside him now. In friendship, or to catch him if he falls? "For what it's worth," he's saying, casually, as if Itona didn't just tumble down the rabbit hole of screaming panic right next to him, "I don't think you're a weapon."  
"Why not?" and he can hear the desperation, the neediness in his own voice, and he just needs a reason, one reason, either way. Stay or fall?  
"Well . . ." Terasaka shifts his weight, looks up at the clouded night. "You put four sugars in your coffee. You mutter to yourself when you're working. You draw blueprints on the back of your hand and when you can't sleep you put your earphones in and turn the music up loud, and I . . . I don't think weapons do all that."  
"What am I, then?" He feels so lost.  
"You're a person," says Terasaka simply. "You're a person and sure, you're a bit fucked up, but aren't we all? And . . ." he holds out one large, calloused hand, "you've got a friend."  
Itona takes the offered hand, lets Terasaka lift him down as gently as a mediaeval lord helping his lover alight from a carriage. The cold wave doesn't quite drain away, but it starts to evaporate in the new warmth. The heights of the flood have passed, and now the sun is hitting the ruins in a way that might almost be peaceful.  
Might almost be beautiful.  
With one hand still clasped in Terasaka's, he turns and replaces the phone in its blue steel box. Closes the door.  
And as the first rays of dawn sun break through the clouds and light the rain into a thousand strands of gold, they climb into Terasaka's rattling van and drive away, through the waking streets.  
"I think I'll call Karasuma," he says quietly, staring out the rain-streaked windscreen. "Do you remember what he said?"  
Terasaka nods. They both remember that day, in the tumbling aftermath, when the man who had taught them to fight and kill stood in front of a class of tearful, deadly children and said, "You're going to carry this forever, believe me. But I swear, there's no shame in asking for help. I know this is all classified, and it's going to stay that way for a long time, but if you're hurting, I will move heaven and hell to get you the help you need. That's a promise."  
"Good idea," says Terasaka. One hand slips off the steering wheel to squeeze Itona's. "Good idea."  
And he turns on the radio, and the van fills up with music, and as they drive away through the wisps of golden steam the rain falls and falls and washes everything clean.


End file.
